Things Fall Apart; the Centre Cannot Hold

Posted 30 July, 2007 in Literary Criticism, Book Reviewing | No comments

In this corner, wearing the blue trunks and gradually greying, Sven Birkerts, writing in the Boston Globe on behalf of traditional print reviewers:

The implicit immediacy and ephemerality of “post” and “update,” the deeply embedded assumption of referentiality (linkage being part of the point of blogging), not to mention a new of-the-moment ethos among so many of the bloggers (especially the younger ones) favors a less formal, less linear, and essentially unedited mode of argument. While more traditional print-based standards are still in place on sites like Slate and the online offerings of numerous print magazines, many of the blogs venture a more idiosyncratic, off-the-cuff style, a kind of “I’ve been thinking . . .” approach. At some level it’s the difference between amateur and professional. What we gain in independence and freshness we lose in authority and accountability.

And in the other corner, wearing the red trunks, and delicately plucking occasional grey hairs from his beard, Ed Champion, writing online in defence of the litblogosphere:

What’s not to suggest that the litbloggers — who might just present a more comforting anarchy than a “self-constituted group of those who have made it their purpose to do so” — can’t “matter” in the way that Birkerts describes? If the norms of print culture have refused to shift over the past twenty-five years, as Pat Holt has suggested, maybe it’s high time for these norms to be shaken up. Maybe the centrifugal proliferation that Birkerts bemoans is the very impetus that will “define, or prompt, or inspire, or at least intuit” in that way that Cynthia Ozick pined for. (And if Birkerts can twist Ozick’s argument to suit his purposes, then I suppose I’m entitled to do the same.)

Is it just me, or is this whole debate becoming almost unbearably tedious? The arguments on both sides — a lack of editorial oversight and authority on the one hand; an elitist, hierarchical, and monolithic vision of culture on the other — are so predictable that it’s hardly necessary even to read these pieces anymore to divine their contents.

Equally predictable is the call-and-response pattern: a print journalist, observing the shrinking space devoted to books and book reviews in traditional print media, will write a piece bemoaning the loss of editorial standards and authoritative commentary in the online miasma of book chat; and litbloggers, feeling slighted, will respond by charging said print journalist with elitism and obsolescence. (It took less than twenty-four hours for one blogger to trot out the “elitist” accusation against Birkerts, while failing to mention that Birkerts applies the term to himself in his Globe piece, which kind of denudes the sting, if you ask me.)

While it would be foolish and hypocritical of me to denounce the evident virtues of the blogosphere out of hand, I must confess a sympathy for Birkerts’ advocacy of some kind of editorial standards in book reviewing (or any other kind of criticism, for that matter). And I’m not so sure that the “anarchy” Ed points to in the litblogosphere is all that “comforting”: a medium that accords equal weight to thoughtful, knowledgeable, well-written criticism and semiliterate doggerel seems deficient in at least one respect.

Having said that, I do wonder why print journalists and litbloggers constantly have to react to each other like opposite poles of a magnet. Would it not be more advantageous to dispense with the knee-jerk adversarial reactions on both sides and try to find some common ground, some way of living, and working, together? The garden of literature is surely vibrant enough to allow for numerous gardeners tilling and planting and fertilizing it. In this respect, Ed’s comment about online book critics crossing over to print reviews is well taken, and is a reminder that at our core, we’re really not all that different.

I would write more on this subject, but I’ve got a deadline. As it happens, I’ve been contracted to write a print review for a Canadian newspaper. Funny that.

Hindering Horses and Shooting the Wounded

Posted 23 July, 2007 in Book Reviewing, Book Reviews | No comments

Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America, by Gail Pool. University of Missouri Press, $21.62 tpb, 174 pp., ISBN: 978-0-8262-1728-8.

Pity the lowly book reviewer. Poorly paid, located at the bottom of the journalistic pecking order, where they toil in what Guy Davenport referred to as “the slum of American letters,” and routinely reviled by readers and writers alike, those who review books professionally (I hesitate to say “for a living,” since only a scant few can earn a living off of it, and they are mostly salaried employees of a newspaper or periodical) often feel that their efforts are both arduous and thankless in roughly equal measure.

“Book reviews first appeared in America at the end of the eighteenth century,” writes Gail Pool in the Introduction to her new book, and “[t]hey have been frustrating people ever since.” Chekhov called book critics “horse-flies which hinder the horses in their ploughing of the soil,” and Murray Kempton opined, “A critic is someone who enters the battlefield after the war is over and shoots the wounded.” Coleridge said that book reviewers “are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, etc., if they could: they have tried their talents at one or at the other, and have failed.”

These disparaging remarks, coming as they do from working writers, all of whom can be assumed at one time or another to have been on the receiving end of a reviewer’s censure, are understandable, but they don’t serve as much balm to a reviewer’s fragile ego, and in any case they seem to miss the point. In particular, the charge that book reviewers are themselves failed writers has always struck me as odd, since book reviewers use precisely the same tools as novelists and poets to achieve their effects. They are only “failed” writers if their reviews lack coherence, or persuasion, or logic; otherwise reviewers have as much claim to being writers, sans l’adjectif, as does anyone else whose primary occupation involves the manipulation of language for the purposes of edification or entertainment.

The common perception of book reviewers as the bottom feeders of the literary world is largely predicated upon a misapprehension as to what exactly this amorphous group of people does. Many begin with the notion espoused by Amanda Craig that to review fiction “[a]ll you have to do is read a couple of hundred pages of someone wanking their imagination, and write five hundred moderately clever words about it.” This is dismissive to the point of being insulting, but Craig makes a mistake when she implies that “reading a couple of hundred pages of someone wanking their imagination” — if we might, for a moment, accept this description as an accurate summation of what a fiction reviewer does — then writing five hundred words about it, “moderately clever” or otherwise, is easy work.

Close reading of the kind a solid book review requires is itself not a task undertaken lightly; it is important for a proficient book reviewer to possess the ability to discern how a work achieves its effects and to judge whether the constituent parts of a book add up to a coherent whole. This requires a certain breadth of knowledge, a refined taste, and a sensitivity to nuances of language, none of which can be developed overnight.

Moreover, it is fallacious to suggest that a reviewer who is assigned a 200-page novel will stop at reading those 200 pages. As Pool rightly points out, “if a review is to be accurate, more is generally required than simply reading the book.” If the novel is the third book in a trilogy, for instance, it will be necessary for the reviewer to go back and read (or reread) the first two volumes in order to form any kind of valid perspective on the book in question. Further, if the reviewer is assigned, say, a biography of Richard Nixon, unless that reviewer happens to be a Nixon scholar, it will be necessary to do some background reading and research in order to provide a context within which the book under consideration can be fairly judged. In Pool’s words, “A reviewer can’t become an instant expert, but he can bring an intelligent, informed perspective to a book if he has read, say, all the author’s previous work, several other biographies of the figure whose latest biography he’s reviewing, various travel accounts of whatever country is the subject of his review.”

In his essay, “Confessions of a Book Columnist,” collected in Ripostes: Reflections on Canadian Literature, Philip Marchand sets out two prerequisites for a good book reviewer: she must be well read, and she must be, in the words of T.S. Eliot, “very intelligent.” If this seems somewhat vague, Pool goes further:

Ideally, reviewers should be well educated, widely read, culturally aware, endowed with good memory and, needless to say, good taste. They must be able to read critically, think lucidly, and argue logically. They must write clearly enough to be accessible, sharply enough to be entertaining, and tightly enough to turn seven hundred words into an article. They need sufficient independence of mind to form their own opinions, sufficient confidence to stand by them, and sufficient courage to see them in print.

I have argued repeatedly on this site that book reviewing is not a dilletante’s game; Pool here explains why. The qualifications that she lists as appearing on the “ideal” reviewer’s résumé I would argue are essential for anyone who wishes to practise the trade.

One reason why many book reviews — even (perhaps especially) those that are published in our major news organs — are so lacking in quality, Pool argues, is that editors too often assign books to the wrong people, and the reviews suffer accordingly. A name-brand novelist may bring a publication cachet if assigned to review a major new work of fiction, but that novelist may be utterly incapable of the kind of critical thinking necessary to do justice to a review. Nor, Pool suggests, do academics or specialists in a given field “necessarily make good reviewers”:

It’s one thing to find a William Dean Howells, who was a writer, critic, and editor. Nowadays, most of the people who are ideally qualified in terms of subject expertise and breadth of reading, in fiction as well as nonfiction, are likely to be academics, accustomed to academic writing and discourse — and as someone who has edited such writers, I know well the problems they present. In their own spheres they’ll have no need to make their points accessible to a general audience and will have had little practice in translating what they have to say into readable, let alone lively, prose.

At the other end of the spectrum are the enthusiastic amateurs who proliferate online, where the democracy of the Internet allows everyone a voice, but removes the editorial filter and does not demand that commentators attain a basic level of competence before they begin reviewing. Pool finds legitimate fault with a medium that asserts that all voices are equal and all opinions should carry equal weight, a medium that assigns equal value to the thoughtful, knowledgeable criticism of Sven Birkerts on the one hand, and the semiliterate ramblings of Harriet Klausner, Amazon.com’s top reviewer, with 6,500 reviews and counting to her credit, on the other.

The background for Pool’s analysis is a culture that actively discourages critical thinking, one that would rather have enthusiastic cheerleaders (like Oprah) than incisive critics. Although one of the persistent complaints about book critics is that they are too nasty, Pool finds that the opposite is in fact true: often, critics aren’t nasty enough. It is interesting that both Pool and Marchand make the same comment: both stand by every negative word they ever wrote, but both confess to some retrospective reservations about reviews in which they feel they treated their subjects too kindly. Pool attributes this to “weakness,” and points out that “it takes courage and confidence for a reviewer to go his own way and tell readers that the latest ‘masterpiece’ isn’t very good. Amid the waves of praise, he risks not only what all critics risk, being wrong, but being wrong alone.”

In today’s anticritical culture, it is a rare thing indeed to find a reviewer with the courage to stand out from the crowd and declare that the latest “instant classic” is actually a dud, that the emperor has no clothes. Pool’s book is a clarion call for a return to a vigorous kind of criticism, based on sound, logical thinking and the precise use of language. Her prescriptions for an ailing trade are based upon underlying premises that appear obvious, but that bear repeating:

That not only is reviewing important, but reviewers and editors need to take its importance more seriously than they do, steeling themselves against public opinion, literary snobbery, and their own self-doubt and remembering that cultural attitudes are subject to change. … That not only can reviewing, however insufficient its resources, require standards, competence, and accountability, but by demanding them — and only by demanding them — actually acquire them.

I’m Just Mad about Harry

Posted 19 July, 2007 in Book News, Book Reviewing | 2 comments

I really didn’t want to give any more press to the new Harry Potter volume, since it’s received more than enough already, much of it the kind of fawning adulation that turns otherwise skeptical literary journalists into slavering acolytes of a marketing behemoth whose hubris apparently knows no bounds. (Now there’s a story worthy of treatment.)

But Michiko Kakutani’s New York Times review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has me turning cartwheels, and not in a good way.

First off, the Times managed to get its hands on a copy of the book, despite the draconian sales embargo placed on the title by publishers Bloomsbury (in the U.K.), Scholastic (in the U.S.), and Raincoast (in Canada). How did the Times get its hands on a copy of the book? Did it involve a clandestine meeting between Kakutani and some shadowy, raincoat-clad publisher’s representative in a dank parking lot somewhere? Apparently not. According to the review “a copy [of the book] was purchased at a New York City store yesterday.” This means one of two things. Either the clerk at the unidentified “New York City store” who made the sale was unaware of the purchaser’s identity and is thus wantonly flouting the embargo, or said clerk knew who the purchaser was, which means that the Times is getting preferential treatment.

Either way, what really irks me is the notion that the book was purchased yesterday. This means that Kakutani consumed the entire 759-page tome and managed to write a 1,152-word review of it in under twenty-four hours. In fact, given the deadlines at the Times and their printing schedules, it was probably closer to twelve hours from the time of purchase to the time of filing.

How is it possible to read an entire novel (and a lengthy novel, at that), then formulate a cogent, thoughtful reaction to it in under one calendar day? The kind of close reading, sober second thought, analysis, and comparison that careful criticism (or even careful book reviewing) requires preclude such a rushed timeline. It should have been physically impossible. But such is the furore over all things Harry, that Kakutani managed to put the laws of physics aside and churn out a review.

Forget the fact that Kakutani’s review is so effusive as to beggar description. (Although she does admit that the novel “has some lumpy passages of exposition and a couple of clunky detours,” these mild cavils are trumped by her comparing the work variously to Shakespeare, Dickens, Joseph Campbell, L. Frank Baum, and J.R.R. Tolkien. I haven’t read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — there’s an embargo, don’t you know? — but I’ve read enough of the earlier books to know that the only thing that Harry Potter shares in common with Henry V is the first initial of their given names.) In their desperate need to be first, to scoop all others by getting an early review of the book out, Kakutani and the Times have basically given the middle finger to literature.

So, too, has the Baltimore Sun, which also has an early review. Although less forthcoming than the Times about the provenance of their review copy, the Sun review is no less over-the-top, comparing Rowling to Plato and Descartes, praising her “consummate storytelling skills” (while failing to mention that most of these are cribbed from other sources), and calling the series “a classic bildungsroman.”

“Has there ever been a better symbol of depression than the Dementors …?” asks reviewer Mary Carole McCauley, who has obviously never heard of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. McCauley continues: “Readers could enjoy Rowling’s temporary, folksy fix for chasing away the blues (eat chocolate) while applauding the more permanent balm she offers: Concentrate with all your might on the events and people that have made you happy.” Which is simultaneously trite and an indication that Rowling is an avowed advocate of The Secret.

What was I saying about giving the middle finger to literature?

But, of course, it was never about literature, was it? It was, and remains, about money and marketing. It’s doubtful that Scholastic will pursue the New York Times or the Baltimore Sun with the litigious vigour that it is threatening to rain down upon distributor Levy Home Entertainment and seller DeepDiscount.com for allegedly releasing copies of the book early; that would be shooting themselves in the foot. (A statement from Scholastic reads in part: “We are taking immediate legal action against DeepDiscount.com and Levy Home Entertainment. The number of copies shipped is around one one-hundredth of one percent of the total U.S. copies to go on sale at 12:01 am on July 21st.”)

And the world keeps turning. And we’re one day closer to putting all of this madness behind us.

Book Reviewers and Conflict of Interest

Posted 13 June, 2007 in Book Reviewing | No comments

Much ink has been spilled of late (many pixels have been pixellated?) about the subject of ethics in book reviewing. This was the topic of a Book Expo America panel that consisted of such book industry mainstays as Sam Tanenhaus, Christopher Hitchens, and Francine Prose. Edward Champion has comprehensive coverage of the BEA panel here (and here, and here. There’s a point at which comprehensiveness shades into obsessiveness, but I’m still not sure where that point lies.).

I got to thinking about the subject after reading a column on the Writer Beware blog by an anonymous (of course!) reviewer who suggests that the only way for a book reviewer to avoid any conflict of interest — or even just the perception of conflict of interest — when reviewing is never, ever to meet the author whose book is under review: “[W]hat do you have to do to get me to review your book? Well, for starters, don’t meet me. Ever.” If you’re an author, don’t shake hands with this reviewer a party, don’t hold the door for her if she’s coming out of the subway behind you, and if you see her on the sidewalk, jump into oncoming traffic to avoid engaging with her.

Besides the affront to common civility implicit in the above, there is another, built-in problem with this approach, one to which our anonymous reviewer points in her post:

A lot of book reviewers are also writers, so we’re constantly skirting conflict-of-interest issues. Causes a lot of strange silences at parties, and the occasional ducking-into-the-bathroom. Recently, I attended a party when I probably shouldn’t have. The publicist grabbed me by the arm … and dragged me over to an author. Unfortunately, I was reviewing his book for a major magazine. I felt I had to tell my editor. My editor felt he had to pull the review.

To me, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. A reviewer whose opinion of a book could be swayed by a casual meeting with the book’s author at a party is probably not someone you want reviewing books to begin with. Such a person is clearly too fickle, too hot-headed, too eager to rush to judgement, and therefore unable engage in the kind of long view and sober second thought that book reviewing requires.

But beyond that, the only way for a reviewer who also writes (or edits, or otherwise moves in literary circles) to avoid even the possibility of such a meeting would be for that person to hermit herself away in her apartment and never leave. This, too, is contrary to the nature of the ideal book reviewer, who should be fully engaged with the world, not shut off from it.

Clearly, you don’t want book reviewers to be reviewing their spouses’ novels (necessarily: See below), or novels by their best friends or their bosses. However, there’s a world of difference between meeting someone casually over cocktails and having an ongoing relationship with that person.

Ultimately, as Adam Kirsch asserts in the New York Sun, such considerations are based on a false understanding of what a review is, since they “envision the book review as a transaction between author and reviewer, rather than between reviewer and reader.”:

To be obsessed with potential bias or conflict of interest on the book reviewer’s part is to imagine the reviewer as a judge, who is obligated to provide every author with his or her day in court. But that judicial standard is impossible, because there is no such thing as an objective judgment of a work of literature; aesthetic judgment is by definition personal and opinionated. Nor would a perfectly objective book review even be desirable. The whole point of a review is to set one mind against another, and see what sparks fly. If the reviewer lacks an individual point of view, or struggles to repress it, there can be no intellectual friction, and therefore no interest or drama.

Kirsch’s article devolves into a screed against litbloggers, trotting out the familiar, and by now quite shopworn, arguments against their very existence, which I have neither the time nor the constitution to engage with here. But on the limited point above, I must agree with him.

Which is not to say that there should be no standards as to who reviews what. History has shown that it’s probably not a good idea, for instance, to allow Ryan Bigge to review Leah McLaren. CanLit is a small pond, but it’s not that small. However, getting all in a twist over perceived issues of conflict regarding the fact that reviewer X once sat at a table of twenty people, one of whom happened to be author Y, who at one point in the evening asked reviewer X for the time, just doesn’t seem fruitful.

And it gives reviewers precious little credit for being able to think independently. Let us not forget that Rebecca West’s classic 1914 essay, “The Duty of Harsh Criticism,” was in part a negative assessment of The Passionate Friends by H.G. Wells, with whom West was romantically involved. Good thing West wasn’t around to read that anonymous reviewer at Writer Beware. She might never have written her essay, which would have made the canon of literary criticism that much poorer.

(For a contrary take on the Writer Beware piece, go here.)